A lot of foreign language instruction is geared toward the travelling experience. But what that typically means is a few vocabulary lessons on shopping and a few key phrases on how to order from a menu. If you aren’t really interested in local dining or boutiques, then you’ll probably find that even mastering all the vocabulary or phrases in a language guide will do little to help you on your particular journey.
A set of new apps hits the iTunes App Store today that offers a much better way to help you customize what you want and need to know about a particular language – whether you’re travelling for business or for pleasure. TripLingo launches its first 4 apps with Mexican Spanish, French, German, and Brazilian Portugese versions.
Sponsor
The app lets you customize your phrase list, based on your interests, your planned activities, and on any special circumstances. When you launch the app, you walk through a series of questions that lets you rate how important certain subjects are to you – do you want to know about sports lingo? Do you want to know how to flirt? Do you want to go shopping? More importantly, arguably, are you travelling with children? Are you diabetic? Are you disabled?
Once you fill out this opening survey, TripLingo will generate a list of phrases for you to practice via Flash Cards. And each of those phrases can be modified with a Slang Slider, letting you see 4 versions: formal, casual, slang, and crazy.
The app also includes audio recordings of each phrase, a 2000 word dictionary, a Word Bank with words grouped by category (such as “alcohol” or “medical”) and relevant cultural information (like how the French kiss on the cheeks to say hello).
TripLingo’s 7-person team is based in Atlanta, and although the team recently won the Startup Riot competition, it faces stiff competition from a lot of players in the language-learning space. But the customized phrase list definitely sets this app apart from others.
The first 20 ReadWriteWeb readers who click this link will get a free download to try it out. The app normally costs $4.99 per language.
0 Responses
Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.